BTS Said to Kick Off $1.3 Billion Thai IPO of Toll-Road Fund

By Joyce Koh -
Feb 28, 2013

BTS Group Holdings Pcl (BTS), the operator
of Bangkok’s sky train, has started gauging investor interest in
what may be Thailand’s biggest-ever initial public offering,
said three people with knowledge of the matter.

BTS plans to sell shares in a fund that will invest in
railways and toll roads, one of the people said, asking not to
be identified as the information is private. The company said in
November that it would set up a fund of 50 billion baht ($1.7
billion) to 60 billion baht to acquire such assets. The fund
will start trading in April, one person said.

The sale may raise as much as $1.3 billion, people familiar
with the deal said in November. At that size, it would surpass
Thai Oil Pcl’s October 2004 IPO, which raised 32.5 billion baht,
or about $1.1 billion at current exchange rates, data compiled
by Bloomberg show.

BTS will keep a one-third stake in the fund, according to a
Nov. 12 presentation by the company. A spokeswoman for BTS
declined to comment on the IPO.

After Thailand’s SET Index (SET) was Asia’s second-best
performing benchmark in 2012 with a gain of 36 percent, the
nation’s stock exchange is expecting as much as $4 billion of
listings this year, the bourse’s president said in January. That
would more than double the value of IPOs priced in Thailand last
year, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

The SET Index is up 11 percent this year. BTS has climbed
15 percent in Bangkok since Dec. 31, adding to last year’s 63
percent rally and giving the company a market value of 90.7
billion baht.